Chapter 36
Savannah
I returned to my room, dumped all my stuff, and then went to the athlete residences.
Armed only with my phone and my temper, I reached my destination pretty quickly. I wasn’t an athlete, but I could power walk like a she-demon who had just learned about a sale in hell.
I was about to freak out, so outside his dorm, I took a couple of deep breaths.
Should I be here? Had I even thought this through? Maybe I should have rehearsed? But when had Dante Spence ever given me time to rehearse anything?
The front door opened, and a guy came out. He looked me up and down.
“You need in?” he asked me, walking out, his fingertips on the door.
“Um . . .”
He shrugged and kept walking, and I darted forward as the door began to close.
I climbed the stairs on autopilot, unsure of which room was his, until I remembered the dorm number.
It was 303, the same backward as it was forward.
Stupid, the things you notice when you follow the quarterback up to his room to have sex with him.
Not that that had been my intention that night. I snorted, thinking, Sure, Savvy, keep lying to yourself.
My knock came sharp and too fast, and before I could bolt, the door opened.
Dante stood there in a black Henley and black shorts, damp hair sticking up any which way. He looked at me in surprise. My resolve wavered, but then the words crashed out of me, breathless and unpolished.
“I found something.”
His expression shifted. He pulled me inside and shut the door. “Sav.” His voice was low, warning. “What did you do?”
“I went through the records. The Academic Liaisons’ files. I shouldn’t have—” My hands shook as I fumbled in my back pocket for my phone. Still shaking, I opened my phone and showed him the pieced bits of text from Hadley’s blog. “But I did, and you need to see this.”
He took it, eyes flicking over the screen. The silence stretched, thicker with every second.
“I’m so sorry to be the one to tell you this,” I said quickly, my words tumbling over each other. “But it’s so much more than grade altering. Read this.”
His eyes narrowed as he read. “Sav—”
“It got buried, scrubbed, but I found this draft cached. And a student named Hadley — she was the one who posted it.”
His gaze snapped to mine, sharp as a blade. “Hadley? Is she still—”
“Yes. Still here, I think. Still a student. And if she knew enough to post this last semester, then . . .” My throat closed around the rest. “Then it’s not as hidden as they think.”
His jaw worked, tight enough I could see the muscle twitching. He handed me back my phone, and I got the impression he wanted to throw it across the room. His hands clenched into fists at his sides. “Damn it, Sav, I told you not to do this.”
“I had to!” The desperation in my voice cracked through the room. “I needed to know what else they were hiding! This is so bad and they aren’t even hiding it well. What happens when they decide you’re too much trouble?”
He closed the space between us in two strides, his presence crowding out every rational thought. “You shouldn’t be the one digging.”
“But I did.” My chin lifted, shaky but defiant. “Because you matter to me, and I had to know and I am not going to watch this program chew you up and spit you out. Or Noah, or Dustin.” I took a shaky breath. “I had to tell you.”
For a moment, the mask slipped. Something raw flickered across his face, gone almost before I caught it.
“We already suspected,” he admitted softly. His hand came up, not touching, just hovering like he couldn’t decide if I would want him to touch me or not.
“You knew?” I took a step back.
“No.” He looked so pissed off, I believed him. “One of the redshirts mentioned a payout, and I overheard. That’s what the fight was about in the bar. We — Noah, Dust, and I — thought this was what was happening, but we weren’t sure.”
“And then what?” I asked. Everything depended on his answer, I knew it as sure as I knew my name.
Dante looked at me in defeat. “What can we do, Sav? We’re angry, fucking pissed, this is our love, this is our future. We speak up, they cut us. They have a helluva lot more fucking weight behind them than we do. We decided to keep our heads down, hope we can ride it out.”
“Is that what you think is best?” I asked. Forget what I thought a moment ago, this was the answer I needed.
“No.” His gaze was crystal clear, his voice solid and sure. “No, I want to rip it all down and expose every last fucking one of them. But . . .”
“But?”
“It’s not just the football team, Sav. It’s in every athletic department. It’s not just me, and Dust, and Noah. It affects every single person in the sports program.”
“Shit.” That’s what my dad had implied, wasn’t it? “Shit,” I said again.
“Still with me, Sav?” he asked softly.
“Of course I’m with you,” I told him, and he stepped forward.
“If you’re in this,” he said, voice quiet but steel underneath, “you’re in it with me. No half measures, Sav. No hiding.”
My breath hitched. “I didn’t plan to be in it at all.”
“Too late for that,” he said, and this time when his hand cupped my jaw, it wasn’t tentative. It was possession, frustration, and a vow all tangled together.
“I told my dad.”
Dante looked speechless, so I hurried on.
“I showed him that and all the things I found.” I was rushing now, and I recognized that dark spark in his eyes.
“I’ve seen the changes to the grades, the injury reports, I saw it all.
” I was practically panting. “My dad texted me because I missed lunch yesterday, and I went, and I threw my phone on his desk, and he knew.” My voice cracked on the last word, and I didn’t know I was crying until he wiped his thumbs under my eyes.
“He knew and he said . . .” I shook my head, stepping back, needing space for this.
“He said I need to stop, or it will ruin you.”
Dante frowned. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means the system will replace you, and your football career is over. Just like you said.” Tears were flowing freely now. “I won’t let that happen,” I promised, desperation clawing at my throat. “I won’t.”
Dante took a step toward me, his arms wrapping around me. “Shh, sweetheart. You have to calm down, nothing is going to happen to me.”
I hiccuped, and he smiled into my hair. “Sorry.”
“You’re fine, Sav, it’s going to be fine.” He was rocking me, and it was soothing me, but I didn’t know how he was so calm.
“Why aren’t you freaking out?” I asked him slowly.
“Because you’re freaking out enough for both of us, and I need you to be calm so I can then go and punch things.”
He said it so flatly that I giggled, and he wrapped his arms around me tighter.
“There she is,” he murmured. “There’s my girl.”
The door opened behind us.
I jolted back as Dustin stepped in, Noah close behind him. Both froze at the sight of us standing too close, the air thick with something I couldn’t name.
“Uh,” Dustin said carefully, eyes darting between us. “We interrupting something?”
“No,” Dante snapped, stepping away like it was nothing. “You’re right on time.”
Noah crossed his arms, gaze heavy on Dante. “On time for what?”
Dante held his hand out, and I placed my phone into it without question. “For this.”
They read in silence, Dustin’s brow furrowing deeper with every line, Noah’s jaw tightening.
Finally, Dustin looked up. “Then it’s confirmed.”
“Yes,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt. “But buried. And if they buried this, who knows what else?”
Noah exhaled through his nose, a sound closer to a growl. “So we were really right — the program’s rotten from the inside out?”
Dante’s stare didn’t leave me, though he spoke to both of them. “That’s exactly what she’s saying.”
Dustin handed the phone back to me, rubbing the back of his neck. “Jesus, Dante. You realize what happens if this blows open?”
“Yeah,” Dante said flatly. “Which is why we don’t let this take us out.” His gaze flicked between the three of us. “We’re in this together now. All of us.”
No one spoke for a beat. The weight of what he’d just said settled like an anchor, pulling us all down into the same dark water.
I realized there was no going back.
“I confronted my dad,” I told them, and almost laughed at how both of their expressions mirrored Dante’s a few minutes ago.
“And after telling Dante, and knowing you maybe suspected it, well . . .” I looked between the three of them.
“I think this is so much more than what you thought, and I think the only way to get through it, is to—”
“Survive it,” Dustin grumbled. “You told your dad you found this?” He shook his head. “Damn, you got balls.”
Dante beamed at me. “I told you that too, remember?”
Noah was watching us. “There is so much here I need to think about,” he admitted. “But I thought you two were going to be . . . discreet?”
“Fuck discreet,” Dante said, wrapping his arm around me. “She’s mine.”
Noah huffed out a laugh. “Yeah, no one here’s trying to take her off you, man.”
Dustin grinned for the first time. “Well, I dunno. You sure about him, Savannah?”
“I really am,” I told him. “Weird, huh?”
“Why is that weird?” Dante demanded.
Noah opened the fridge and handed me a bottle of water first, and then to the two guys, too. “So what do we do?”
They all looked at me. “I think you do what you planned to. Keep your heads down, but I think knowing the extent of it is only to your benefit.” Dante took my bottle of water off me, opened it, and handed it back. I wasn’t sure what to say to that. I could open a bottle of water. “Um . . . thanks?”
“He has more Southern gentleman in him than most,” Dustin explained with a grin.
“Ah, okay.” I felt my flush, and Dante winked when I looked over, and I didn’t hide my answering smile. “So, I, um, looked into some of your teammates who are being assisted. Do you want to know who?”
They all spoke at once. Dante and Noah said yes, Dustin said no.
“Majority wins,” Dante said, crossing his arms.